chuck hagel is officially sworn in as the new us secretary of defense to winning narrow senate approval but his policies of drawing fire from capitol hill with his own fellow republicans about his most vocal critics. it's amazing chaos off the parliamentary election there failed to produce a clear winner and now european leaders of the country's political turmoil could have a strong negative effect on the entire eurozone examine that a bit deeper this hour. for a minor traffic offense the shocking video posted by a russian couple of their eight year old daughter eight driving dangerous speeds.

never get even chief just joined us ten pm now here in moscow is kevin owen live at the new center of top story chuck hagel now officially the u.s. defense secretary but only after being narrowly approved by the senate he's been under fire from fellow republicans for his past criticism of the iraq war and also the israeli lobby with some believing he could also be too soft on iran also of course just two days before billions of dollars in budget cuts in the military. on the clash on capitol hill. chuck hagel was confirmed by the senate fifty eight votes for forty one vote against a narrow vote as you can see he can find in louisville all that apologizing and repenting behind and he had to do a lot of that to get the job has been working very hard to tailor his views so as to please congress as a senator chuck hagel allowed himself to oppose the surge in iraq or to criticize israel's policies to oppose seeing war with iran as an option but as the president's nominee for the defense secretary position he backtracked on much of

what he had said before and did it as as even his supporters noted in a rather clumsy way but in a way that showed how much he wanted the job and the whole confirmation process including the attack campaign against him including the filibuster ten days ago showed how intolerant the u.s. congress is of alternative thought on foreign policy ten days ago the senators knew quite well that chuck hagel would eventually be confirmed but they chose to block the vote as many say just to make a point president obama certainly knew that chuck hagel confirmation process would not go as smoothly as say john kerry's but he nominated him anyway it looks like president obama too wanted to make a point this is his last term he doesn't have to think about getting reelected and it is a good time for him to make a point by the end of his first term the degree of warmongering in washington has escalated and we should the point where even the president said there's too much work talking going on now mandating chuck hagel could be his way of bringing it

down a notch the president is also quite aware of the general war fatigue in the country but the u.s. congress doesn't seem to have that same war fatigue as chuck hagel confirmation hearing showed quite to the contrary never too tired for war it seems one more thing it's saying important to point out here chuck hagel as defense secretary little not be in a position to generate policies is there to fulfill the president's policies probably his main job will be managing the budget the biggest military budget in the world and figuring out where to make cuts but most of the questions senators asked during his confirmation hearing were about policies which is really not going to be in his field of work anyway. coming up soon will another new face of american politics make a difference in syria's secular state john kerry said washington's ready to syrian rebels now is and the assad fighters wait for support from the west and back as we got a report of much debate later. next italy's looking for a way out of its election limbo after that hung parliament put europe on

tenterhooks and raised fears of fresh financial turmoil while stock markets mostly rose on wednesday offsetting the jitters they initially suffered no parties won a parliamentary majority the center left group secured a narrow victory in the lower house but failed to win the senate former prime minister silvio berlusconi's center right bloc became the second biggest in the upper chamber where the results show italian voters strongly reject that lee a sturdy policies of mario monti's government if the rival parties can't find a way of their deadlock have to be another election investment advisor patrick young says italian uncertainty could prove fatal for the eurozone. but your real crisis that elephant in the room that nobody was talking about so far this year is back and it's back big time because ultimately fifty seven percent of italians don't like the idea of a sturdy and they don't really want to do the sorts of things that the european union wants imposed upon them that's causing us a huge problem because ultimately you've got incredible new parties like betty greeley or surf ice storm movement you've got an incredible wave of support that

came back from mr berlusconi a former prime minister and so billy missions and of course not i it plays in the worst possible political limbo there's no clear ike right winner there's no clear government it's going to take weeks on end and ultimately markets despise the idea of uncertainty and what they're looking out at the moment is an awful uncertainty because they simply don't know whether it really is going to be a reliable member of the euro zone and if it really is not going to be able to reliable member of the euro zone then there probably is not going to be a euro zone the european union is affectively trying to support its banking industry which has never recovered from the creative mortgage lending excesses of two thousand and seven two thousand and eight and that leaves us with a very delicate position but ultimately should investors lose money because of bad investment decisions well as an investor an advisor i have to say that's what we call capitalism that's what's happened it shouldn't just be a case of the poor people innocent people are forced to suffer incredible austerity

a propos of bailing i'd investors and bankers it's a stalemate says hi than all the media agenda to actually expect across europe parties peter all of has been leafing through some of the german newspapers and their concerns over how the key players might affect the wider european economy now . the ongoing political turmoil in italy is making headlines not just in that country but around the world here in germany all of the major newspapers just about a carrying the talian election story on their front pages with many saying this well stalemate in italy means concern for the rest of europe the reason for that concern is that well if they can't be any agreement made on how that country should be run and it could be that if it's really sneezes politically then europe gets a severe cold economically and that's the big fear so no i'm going for

a more jokey look at it what some of the tabloids pre-training the perhaps four front runners and cartoon form on the front saying neither left nor right nobody knows what they want. the true though that they're getting most of the focus are the former comedian ben law and the former prime minister silvio berlusconi now the discussion between those two is repeated again in some of the more conservative newspapers here in germany those newspapers though also not giving much pity to the italian people they go on to say that it's really cannot remain on governable that it must get back on track and let's get back to austerity it does seem though that as far as the german newspapers are concerned and most of the rest of the german media the italian people find themselves with a clown to the left of them a joke to the right and they're stuck in the middle with very little idea of what

they want politically. peter all over now there's been no little sign of progress following nuclear talks between iran and six world powers to run and were hailed a turning point in the negotiations over being offered some relief from sanctions in return for limiting the radio in richmond and the sides agreed to meet again in april this with hillary mann leverett the c.e.o. of strategic energy and global analysis joining us on the line from washington where the hillary talks ended agreeing to hold more talks of just mentioned. said it went well did it really. well i think it probably went as well as could be expected and i don't think there were many expectations either in in iran in tehran or or here in washington or perhaps any of the other capitals of the p five plus one those at the talks. but because expectations were low does not necessarily mean that this was a great result i think perhaps the iranians are saying that there was

a turning point here because there was a slight move in the u.s. position to not demand iran completely close some of its critical nuclear facilities stop its enrichment and ship out parts of it much of its current stockpile of and if you're a medium that potentially could put the parties into a process if the united states is not demanding from the get go that iran see its both what it considers its sovereign and its treaty rights under the n.p.t. on the nuclear issue the six key players who said that they would ease sanctions if run stops enriching to twenty percent that's the key point when it becomes dangerous is that going to to have. you know i actually don't think the same piece is the critical piece everyone knows that the united states has very little that it can give on sanctions president obama essentially ceded his foreign policy on this issue to the u.s. congress although almost all of those sanctions are written into u.s.

law they're not something that president obama can just give away at best president obama can waive implementation of some of the same sions for six months at a time and that's only until congress takes away his waiver authority so there's not that much the united states actually can give on sanctions and in the meantime iran is becoming more and more self-sufficient in a range of issues so that it's not vulnerable to such kind of sanctions the critical issue for the iranians and i think this is where they perceived a slight and i stress slight movement on the u.s. side is in the recognition of their rights their sovereign and their treaty base rights to enrich uranium what that does is not solve the problem but it allows a process to go forward of negotiations and suddenly go she ations over how much the united states and other key parties are going to allow iran to exercise its rights this does not resolve the problem but what it does is puts in place a process in a sense diffuse the urgency and to constrain other parties who may want to go to

war attack iran in various ways constrain those parties here in the united states and in the region and in the middle east you constrain them by having a process in a sense even a never ending process of negotiation so i think that's been the u.s. game for several months since of course the confirmation of secretary of state kerry and now with secretary of defense hagel. always talking about a possible strike on iran some of the israeli military that could be a u.s. strike on iran as early as june what do you think. well i think that's the purpose of having put it to put in train this kind of process of negotiations it's hard to attack a country when you're talking to it's hard to attack when you're in a process of negotiations so the reality is iran will continue to advance in its nuclear program it's going to continue to advance and i what i would describe it's

rise of power in the middle east and the united states i think is going to just try to hold forces back by having these negotiations in train it's a very imperfect way to approach the problem and i think in many ways inherently unstable because as iran continues. to go forward and speak to a program in the rest of it's in the rest of its ways that it's amassing missing real power in the middle east the united states and particularly its allies israel and saudi arabia will be increasingly uncomfortable with that and i don't know for how long they will be constrained both those allies and their friends here in washington constrained by this these these negotiations because these negotiations are not really intended to resolve the problem. global analysis so long from washington d.c. the thank you very much. thank you. so the program with me kevin owen exit taking the vatican pope benedict delivers his final public address.

next after the. break this is well. really driving at one hundred all the public roads. there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people with. this is a problem that. they were really. people were really focused on the. human suffering.

pope benedict's final public address before leaving the vatican has drawn tens of thousands to simply to square the pontiff will become the first public course to step down in six centuries on friday leading what a secular campaign a key supporters would told me the catholic league is a going to have to make some big changes to deal with the fallout from worldwide child abuse and other scandals. i'm certainly aware of two major issues over child abuse that are going to come up and are going to be very very hard for the vatican to swallow because it's not just that there are the child abuse bad though that is

issues it's actually that the the finger of blame is going to be pointing at the vatican for having obstructed justice in all the secret files where it released so that's going to look very bad and i think people are going to get less and less tolerance about that and that the vatican has shown no real sign of actually coming to terms with this and putting its hands up and really atoning for its power sins and being much more open and and dealing more properly with victims and actually getting the people who perpetrated these crimes. turned over to the police and the outgoing pope has packed the college of cardinals with people who are as if not more conservative than he has so it's going to be pretty hard but if they've got any sense they're actually look and see that the vast majority of catholics don't actually agree with all their positions on on these sensitive social issues and i think they need to actually look at their own congregation and start taking some

signs from that and be much more sensible over issues like contraception homosexuality abortion all those kind of things and actually be open to. secular justice on matters like child abuse and money laundering. reaching sixty in russia a big moment for most youngsters of course that's when they can start on the road to getting a driver's license at the age of eighteen but not take to the wheel some have a significant head start though just take a look at this. go to at least one hundred your mother is filming you in. an eight year old drive in a car my friend asked what have fainted if she saw this. comeback will posted on social networks. so exactly what you call responsible parenthood does it you heard it correctly this girl take your top and german car two hundred kilometers an hour

at the ripe old age of eight me right in some shockingly bad parental guidance if you're a father encouraging it a put the pedal to the metal so to speak on the country road in the snow the girl's mom and dad then posted this video online for the world to see a can of thought they must have thought it was clever earlier they soon deleted the social network accounts after the police started investigating you do have to be eighteen to drive in russia boy was driving look at this driver the moscow region is driving a bus she would want to be on this bus he isn't averse to instigating his own kind of penalties on the road if it means teaching bad drivers a lesson or two as you can see. alexis is nabi he's willing to lay off the brakes it seems another car cuts him off every time he just goes up and shunts from behind is methodism got to be involved in nearly one hundred minor road accidents so far but he's never considered to be at fault by the police is a good excuse for this alexi says it's a common misconception that

a person who rear ends another car is automatically at fault you know we would be able to get away with it he adds that he could cause a more serious accident to lose his license if you were forced to swerve into another lane or into oncoming traffic to avoid a collision there is a bus to miss all right next. britain's squeezed middle class are bearing the brunt of the country struggles to revive the economy a study shows tax hikes are leaving them two hundred eighty pounds a year worse off for more than half of them having no savings to fall back on it's going to be major lifestyle changes and cutbacks for a lot of people called me almost half of respondents. in a poll of already said they'd like to have a week's holiday but they can't afford it now forty percent are going to make do with old furniture because there's no money to replace it only small and as a form of this there's almost thirty percent of working brits can't get their broken electrical goods repaired twenty two percent said they could no longer invite friends round for parties because entertaining is just too costly it's

a sad state of affairs when r.t. sarah first went to find out how britain's middle class feels about reining in the budgets. for a large part of her life liz hoggard has been tapping away at building a life for herself as a freelance journalist she's been part of britain's middle class seeing credit cards pay their mortgages on time and they thrived during being but then came the bust and with as the decline of opportunities there were for so long a middle class perk i didn't get a contract we knew because budgets were being cut and so all those little things you have in place you always live slightly on credit you know you go into interest in anticipation get paid quite soon that got much to low incomes coupled with high living costs stoking fears of a shrinking little in britain is backed up in a report by the resolution foundation think tank it looked into what the future

holds the ten million adults in the low to middle income households forecast another decade of hardship well unfortunately it's a bit of a grim prospect prices have risen faster than earning to quite some time now and what that means is that people. simmer about perhaps a little more but they can't buy as much with it a stark example of this is housing a couple of decades ago you've had to save for a couple of years maybe three or four years to get a deposit on a house if you're a low to middle income first time buyer at the moment you're looking at about twenty two years so middle class trimmings like foreign holidays meals out and home improvements are on hold for the time being as liz has found out she's having to sell off possessions to pay for essential is like dental treatment there's a fear of packing up these books even. so it's quite emotional at times and you have

a rush of memory and then you think of them for ten years and probably if there's something really important i can find online that has revolutionized it but i also think. these books are. my investment in a way it's really inching expiration catalogs that i've bought back if not very much money just just a normal price and then of course they become rare as the years go by so in some ways my stocks and shares been sitting on my shelves which i hadn't known about you see when you look online and i'm something that was confronted so there is a sense of well at least i can pay for my newspaper and also treating that. you know you have to not be a snob in something you cannot make signs that can be hard to keep up the parents says is why seems like the one run by this store here in the that's proving so popular bring along a designer clothes need to fix things at the credit which could be in the store. but it was a bit of a further structure where the first person to actually combine the dress exchange

element with the charity. introducing the exchange about your system rather than buying stock in. the kind of give and take on them as more and more families look for ways to make their money go further the government's being warned that without shared growth britain risks becoming a country of two halves the rich getting richer and the middle classes increasingly losing out. meanwhile lives in a generation like a facing up to the reality that the britain's middle class is the next chapter is looking pretty bleak. the u.s. could be considering a shift on syria secretary of state john kerry is on his first european to signal washington's readiness to support the syrian rebels some u.s. officials say washington is now thinking of giving direct assistance to opposition fighters and possibly even training the syrian national coalition initially

rejected attending the international so-called friends of syria meeting in rome on thursday in protest over what it sees is negligible help from western nations but the s.n.c. will there were turned to see what some of the opposition's accusing the u.s. and its allies of not intervening militarily and not arming the rebels i spoke to dr allen muhammad from the syria tribune he says there's not much kerry can add though to the aid already coming. they are giving them a home to me every country and they are giving them free passage to and from neighboring countries they're giving them even though the west bank proxies proxies they are giving them as well all kinds of explosives and political repercussions so if you're just trying to prepare for the coalition for the next step which should be they all now if he thinks that by by giving them more even more political recognition and promising them the support on the ground he will push them over better but i mean this for they have

a different it was fake and they have been putting a lot of pressure for this stream of change and the balance on the ground could not change based on that they have tried every possible way including mr obama. more than a year ago and this did not work mr kerry things that he has a magic solution that we can move in rather than push him to leave power which is not known to us we don't know what it means by that but i assure you it would also not work what mr kerry needs to do is to give a clear and. it's only very old is the way out and his allies actually the coalition that his president mr clinton they created should understand this and this is the only message that syria and it's going to give. on t.v. and online r.t. stories cover the world for you we got details the now of america's web weapon it's a computer virus called stuxnet same disrupting brands nuclear research but it has been waiting in the wings long before to round was accused of anything in the read

of the back story the home also interesting this one peeping through the iron curtain pyrrhus in north korea getting now a chance to tag the pictures and send tweets from a reclusive country really interesting stuff online there you don't get to see very often you can see it on our website. world news headlines in brief. for the violence in afghanistan a rogue police officer drugged and shot seventeen of his colleagues with the help of local taliban militants that attack happened at a remote police checkpoint three hundred kilometers south of kabul seven of the dead were new recruits who were still in training also just hours later a taliban suicide bomber detonated his device after getting underneath a bus carrying only personnel in kabul ten people injured. five here at an illegal market in the city of kolkata in india it's claimed at least eighteen lives and left dozens of others wounded to most of the victims reporters working in the sixth

or a building from where chemicals and plastics were sold you guessed it toxic gases hampered the rescue efforts there by the hundreds of firefighters who attended the early morning plays an electrical fault thought to be the cause of the. shooting rampage at a factory in switzerland has left three dead including the gunman several others were wounded when that attacker fired a handgun during breakfast in a county that what is a would processing plant near loose and police say the forty two year old killer chose his victims carefully and suffered psychiatric problems recently now though gun ownership is high in switzerland you don't get to hear about shooting crimes very often because they don't happen very often. time for the latest business with natasha good evening to you she's walking into the studio i do believe natasha i believe the world bank has found that women are more honest in business and they're easy to deal with well that's something we knew all along no or absolutely and of course they also tend not to view of red tape as

a major issue i'll bring all of the house in the wise in the business bulletin and just a couple that ok. it's. do we speak your language does anybody will not advance. the program says documentary spanish what matters to you. but i want to turn it to bangalore stories. here. altie spanish to find out more visit actuality tito it's calm. mission free. education free. car charger three.

three. three. three. three bar video for your media project st medio down to r t dot com. it's twenty nine minutes past the hour here in moscow you're watching business on r t with me to show you what's got welcome to the program the number of unemployed in france rose again and january hitting a fifteen year high more than three million people are out of work and europe's second largest the call to me and that means president francois was failing to keep his promise of reducing unemployment to single digits figures and layoffs in france chaos in italy following the parliamentary elections and all the ongoing problems

in spain and greece all of that once again raises the question about the future of the union i asked angus campbell from a london capital group what he thinks of all this. we know perfectly well that the union is not working as had previously been visit when it first came about but that doesn't mean that the political resolve is not we have seen in the last. eighteen months to two years the result is very much keeping the union together not only that you have. thankfully got a central bank the european central bank that is standing behind and backing the euro as well so as long as those two forces remain in tact and in place the euro has very much going chance of surviving the challenges

ahead of course are. the major economies of the euro zone are still heavily indebted they have to rein in those debts it's not easy they want ever said it would be so very hard but as long as you have the political resolve to do so and you have the e.c. be backing the single currency as well there's every chance that it can be achieved going back to france for just a second just recently one of us business tycoons provoked a wave of outrage in france when he said that the french are working just three hours a day and that his company would be stupid to take over an ailing plant in france there is there some truth to what he's saying i mean i know it's pretty harsh but what are we seeing the productivity rate declining in the euro zone if you look over the situation you going to get to see. them so you.

become perhaps a little bit about. the. u.s. home at. work here. and strong which yes probably are a little bit too hard. and let's now see how the european markets are reacting to all the latest economic data while they all seem to be fazed chairs the london rebounded more than three quarters of a percent as you can see in germany the dax gained even more than that with one percent so matter of fact on wall street where the traders act of this hour the stocks are on the rise a couple of positive stats or supporting the market the housing data and the durable goods came in better than expected now moving on to the current sees the euro rose against the u.s. dollar for the first time in three sessions on wednesday here in moscow as you can see the ruble ended up rising against both the dollar and the european currency and

when it comes to stocks here in moscow the indices ended the day mixed the my sex was up just a notch right there but the r.t.s. ended the day flat to negative no major corporate results came out on tuesday so the blue chips really struggle to find direction gasper a look better than the market having jumped almost one percent thanks to the news about its gas supplies to china pull its golden era flaw the biggest losers for the day. now the famine in touch it turns out that's exactly what it's what brushing needs in order to find its corruption and to discuss this i have katie pull being here with me hey katie so so before we get to how women really help russian companies find corruption fight corruption let's talk about the world bank and its general report point yeah well this report

was done from two thousand and eight to twenty eleven so three years and it was done across thirty seven regions in russia and what it found was that corruption is well there's pros and cons actually because as far as manages paying for it it's less of paying bribes case we know that much but the ones that are all are having to pay more money so i think we can conclude from that that corruption is so far about an issue in russia right but what about the women and their input is it true that companies that have women as their heads tend to do better in terms of corruption apparently so several surveys have been taken now including house ones found months and even lab experiments say that women are generally in the workforce as bosses less corrupt now they have their own issues to deal with and that's time tax they call it so when it comes to licenses coming in the post all these admin

barriers they have to wait longer for them actually two percent times longer which equates to ten days just a testament to women's patience wrote something that was. a virtue of course another virtue of women is gratitude i would say as well or once they get to the top that's after they want to stay there and they don't want to risk losing that it's not necessary that these individual women are less corrupt people but it's the fact that because they've gone into management the environment is then. less corrupt and also if they've managed to get to the top in the first place then they're obviously in a more democratic society and people flourish in those of course they do bribe but actually i don't really buy that idea of all women being immune to greed and in fact just this week we heard about a mexican a union leader who actually ended up killing millions of dollars to you know from her own union members to buy houses to pay for plastic surgery in her

name and marcus card so there you have it right but it's not too great ok we're not all women are looking to stand his eye or women are fabulous because that's ridiculous but when it comes to corruption they do deem better and i've got to say in terms of women in power it's been a major if the actually for the last year you know we were in davos last month at the world economic forum and there was a lot of summits going on there i.m.f. chief christine lagarde she was really raving on about the fact that women need to get out that in order to achieve what the world economy wants it to and a few examples of this actually india this is an example nine hundred ninety three a law came out to say that thirty percent of all local councils seats had to go to women now the world bank themselves of recognise the fact that that law actually resulted in lots of fantastic things i'm talking about clean water sanitation and other public services in the city are less corrupt also want to mention it because

it's been dominating the markets this week we know that the cellmate has been a bit of a nasty looking election but one positive thing has come out of it and that is a historic high of women in the parliament actually thirty two percent will be taken up by women in the senate but when it comes to russia is it women are that much better or is it just that men are about well we'll leave that to be debated. i think in terms of the world i've got to say that corruption here in russia of course it still exists exists everywhere we know that but it is being dealt with us we can see it as far as women are concerned they do less of it and that's one of marvell well i don't really believe that women are more solid in terms of their morals i just believe that they tend to rise to the top in the societies that are more open and democratic and want to leave it at that time thank you very much katie philbin. the quality of russia's rhodes has long been the subject of

a lot of derogative jokes but the latest stats are actually supporting what many in russia have long suspected the roads are among the worst in the world according to the global competitiveness index they rank one hundred thirty six out of one hundred forty four countries it follows that would have would have been surprising if it had not been for the fact that russia spends twice as much on its roads as it does on its entire space program four hundred forty billion rubles this year that's about fifteen billion dollars and twenty thirteen but if you think about it that's actually four times less than what the united states sounds on its roads. and that's all the latest from the business team in a few minutes we get the inside from the british governments about what is plaguing the leaders they are right this moment.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought. i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. good lumber tour. was able to build the most sophisticated robot which fortunately

doesn't sound anything tim's mission to teach me the creation of why you should care about humans and. this is why you should care only call. me speak or language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world's hot spots the v.o.i.p. interviews intriguing stories for you. when troy. visit. me is eve.

it'll. say. the be. eleven.

clint subscribe. today i'm talking to keith vaz who is frequently named among the most influential asians in britain he's chairman of the home affairs select committee which is a powerful group which investigates issues to do with the home office such as prisons immigration terrorism and recently the phone hacking scandal thank you very much for talking to us today now one of the departments that falls under your remit is the u.k. borders agency which has been widely criticized recently in fact you have called it unfit for purpose following revelations that it's basically not just around one hundred twenty thousand asylum seekers in migrants what can be done about it will be needs to be a fundamental shift in the culture of the u.k.b.a. we have many citizens from all over the world some who want to come as students some who want to come and settle here some who want to come and invest in our

country and the inefficiency of this organization is i'm afraid a bit of an embarrassment to the government to the people of this country and they really got to get it right. take for example someone living in russia who wishes to come here and to study in our universities and i believe we have the finest universities in the world they take so long to process the cases that frankly people wonder whether or not they should study in the u.k. so this is doing us real damage it's damage to our economy damage to our reputation and frankly it causes a lot of frustration to local people and there's another side to that question though even on the one side we have people that we want to come that essentially can't come and on the other side those people that we don't want to come that are basically wandering around and nobody knows where they are and they're possibly quite understandable well the mayor of london puts this figure at half a million people working in the so-called black economy not paying their taxes or

their national insurance but basically continuing and surviving to do the work that they're doing and it's just not acceptable and i hope very much that we. can take effective action to try and give people the opportunity to be able to remain in this country in a way that is. productive people who come here and therefore they are able to deal with matters in the way in which. can be seen to be fair the moment it's not fair you have people waiting in queues at the moment the backlog is the size of iceland three hundred thousand people and yesterday we heard that there were fifty thousand cases that had not even been put on the computer that will have an effect on national security they went if we got lots of people wandering around potentially illegal immigrants and the u.k. ports agency doesn't know where they are of course and that's a real concern we need to know who enters our country and screen them properly and

then make decisions as to what they should be doing among those genuine asylum seekers are afghan translators who worked for the u.k. and the u.s. army's and now find themselves under threat at home that bringing legal action we've heard recently to get the deal that a rocky translators got which was legal assistance and financial assistance to stay in this country why didn't the afghan translators get that automatically. that's the question i put to the defense secretary i have a particular constituent mohamed who took who's taken years to get asylum has now got his leave to remain but is now waiting to be joined by his wife and two children and there are many others in exactly the same situation what i have said is the afghani interpreters ought to be given the same deal as the iraqi interpreters because they both helped our government and helped those in their fight against the taliban is there an appetite do you think for giving afghan translators the same deal i think the government will have to give way but all this

time though they're living under threat they certainly are what message do you think it sends to the afghans and indeed other nationals that we might want to help us in the future i think it's a bad message and we need to improve the way in which we deal with those from outside. and i hope that we can do it in a way that is acceptable to those who help and serve our country and it's a bad message and we need to make sure that it's improved i think the end of the day the british government will do it but it's just taken such a long time increasing numbers of people in this country are concerned about math in a gracious what methods do you think the mess inside the u.k. board's agency sends to that what it does have an effect on the illegals because they're here it does have an effect on public opinion and i think people don't want people going to this country to create jobs and create wealth they resent people coming here just for example to go on benefits and that sometimes use against those

who are genuinely here as members of the immigrant community but it's not possible at the moment right to distinguish between those two groups that's right it isn't possible to signal and that is exactly what we need to do we need to distinguish and we need to make sure that this is done in a positive and constructive way. in a borders agency move it seemed like a good idea at the time universities were recently denied the right to issue visas to foreign students you object to that it why one university had its sponsor license suspended and in my view that was wrong too rick respectively stop people here genuinely if the university has done something wrong then they want to be published not genuine students i think the government's got the message on this and will make sure that in future that they don't just suspend and put people in this limbo situation so basically your objection is that it was

done retrospectively but it is done respectfully because anyone who studies that. they couldn't study that they were then judicially reviewed and they now recognise that people need to be able to find somewhere else to study. that the period the time that it was announced was the wrong time it was the start of term and no other universities were able to cope at the start of term as one can imagine so they could have chosen a better time so this is really the same issue that we're talking about with the u.k. borders agency as a whole it's a general issue with the u.k. border agency which really does need to be resolved is something being done to resolve this well we heard from the minister and he seemed to be very keen sort of like a very hands on minister he wants to make things change and let's see whether he's able to do so what's your ideal scenario well ideally anyone who wants to come and study here genuinely and attend university here at the university wants them and they qualify to come here they ought to be allowed to come there are currently they

want their smaller universities and language schools they do have the right to issue visas and they're the ones that are taking in these students who turn up to lectures on the first day of term and then are never seen again well those people of course need to be reported it's wrong that they should not be reported my hope they will be this is quite far reaching for universities there isn't it because if they can't get money from foreign students and as we've heard recently applications from u.k. students are down this year whereas the funding going to come from well that's the problem if you take away overseas students and you cut government grants to universities then frankly the institutions will be on the severe throat and they may not be able to can. really have an effect on what you were talking about earlier british universities being some of the best in the world absolutely are we looking then at a brain drain well we're looking at britain no longer retaining its preeminence as

the education capital of the world and i want to make sure the happens and the universities want to make sure that happens unfortunately visa regime works against us terror suspect abu qatada is still here in the u.k. despite the home office's attempts to get rid of him the case now looks like it could carry on for years what went wrong well there is two ways in which this could have been done quicker first of all of fast track system through the european court for those who are suspected of terrorism therefore you don't wait years and years secondly the jordanian criminal code beads to be changed not just assurances could most jordanian government but the criminal code needs to be changed and if the criminal code is changed then there will be a difference and the courts will allow him to go but neither of these things right is under the control of the government of this country no but king abdullah was here and as i said to the home secretary we need to make sure that he does that

make make those changes are we right to let the european court make those kinds of decisions for us who signed up the european convention of human rights were a country that abides by the rule of law and therefore we need to follow what the european court has said that doesn't mean that the court can't be modernized to make more made more efficient is it time now in the light of the abu qatada case and others to examine that again it certainly is and i hope that we can persuade the ministers to do that it's now emerged that taxpayers have paid half a million pounds towards i will qatar has legal aid fees can you comment on that. but it's a huge amount of money. million pounds is a huge amount of money for the taxpayer but also they have he had assets of two hundred seventeen thousand which they've seized so in a real sense they should use those assets against the money that has been paid by the taxpayer but then costs are mounting all the time. we were told the cost of

surveillance but it must be pretty high let's move on the home affairs select committee led an investigation into phone hacking what's your take on the results of the leveson inquiry into press regulation i support it i think it's a great inquiry i support every single word of the leveson inquiry should be implemented in full i heard that you recommended there that the report should be swallowed whole but what does statutory underpinning actually mean nobody knows i think we just have to go through the process of causing a pill well what what lord justice levinson me is we need to have a statute that forms the basis of the rate self-regulation that the newspapers are going to do to themselves and. it needs a bill and that's we don't know do we see the bill and that building to come out of the government then we can comment on it and then we can amend it some of said like

nick clegg the deputy prime minister we should have a royal charter for the press as we have for the b.b.c. but we need to see what what's going to happen i think the broadcast media are very good at keeping within the law keith vaz thank you very much thank you. that. legal. ease that speech.

will. be misleading good. at least some. kind of a relief. wealthy british style. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name two kinds of reports. there are twelve cities in the united states in which half of the people

with hiv aids lives within a year of a diagnosis of. a six to two percent chance. with this is a problem that frankly is substantially preventable it was like the big elephant in the room and nobody wanted to talk about it there were really good public health campaigns that people were really focused on this problem and you certainly should be able to a lot less h i think a lot less human suffering. live

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